


The Things He Learned

by Sindrandi



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Coming of Age, Friendship, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-03-23 12:07:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3767563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sindrandi/pseuds/Sindrandi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All about Grunt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

His mind is something nebulous, a puzzle not quite put together. It tries to break free, to be aware of his surroundings, but there is nothing for it to anchor to. It drifts aimlessly, and somewhere in the deepest recesses, he is disgusted by its weakness.

**********

He feels fluid sloshing around his hide, and discovers that to feel anything at all is a rush. But the fluid is not welcome; it invades his nose, fills his lungs. Something else should be there. Air should be there, not this salty tasting liquid. He falls forward, catching himself with his hands and knees before his face smashes into the ground. He gives a barking cough and retches, clearing the fluid as a sharp inhale puts air into his lungs, the first breath he has ever taken.

It hurts.

_Pain is nothing. Pain only makes you stronger._

That voice, ‘The Tank,’ it whispers into the base of his skull. He does not like this whisper. It sounds different out here. It echoes. The pain in his lungs subsides as they grow accustomed to the air. They need it now. This too is a weakness, and he hates it. He opens his eyes, because he remembers that they will not see anything if they are closed. He sees nothing, just grey. They focus, and he realizes he is staring at a metal floor. _Ship_ , The Tank whispers. He is on a ship. Standing is next. He must stand up if he is to survive. The Tank has whispered this as well.

**********

The human female has a wiry kind of strength that is deceiving. Her throat does not cave in when he holds her up to the wall with his forearm. Scars crisscross her face and an angry orange light glows beneath. She does not flinch, just stares at him, brows drawn together in a frown.

He is not stupid. He sees things. He catalogs them in his brain like so many bookmarks. The Tank teaches, but it does not know all. He senses that some of its lessons may be false, so he will keep everything useful and discard the rest.

She tells him of her enemies around the arm held up against her throat. They are very strong, perhaps the strongest. Yet she still fights them, this tiny, soft, pale human with the too-big eyes. They are prey eyes, eyes meant for spotting threats so they can run away like cowards. But these eyes are hard and dark, and there is something behind them, something that gives him pause.

She almost looks irritated.

This puny, weak creature is annoyed that a perfect krogan is wasting her time holding her up by her neck against a bulkhead.

Then her eyes crinkle and look down. He follows them and that is when he sees the big pistol pointed up into his chest, and at an angle that will likely sever his spine. The Tank tells him that he does not have another, and urgently suggests he should avoid injuring it at all costs. This one may not be as weak as he first thought.

If her enemies are as she promises, he will join her, and it will be glorious.

If it is not, and she lies, he will kill her.

**********

Grunt.

 _Grrr-unt_.

The sound it makes coming out of his mouth is an animal noise, angry and guttural. It means nothing, yet describes everything.

It will do.

**********

Shepard is taking him to a planet.

"This is just a little field trip, Grunt. So just take it easy, ok? Watch a little, and for chrissakes, don't wander into G's shots."

Grunt realizes he has never had his feet on solid ground. Not once in his entire life has he had soil under his feet, between his three toes. He wonders what it would feel like.

"Are you even listening?" she says.

"No."

"Figures. Nobody listens to me anyway," she complains.

"Hey! I listen!" 'G' the turian says.

"Yeah, and you're a one man army."

Grunt is not listening. The Tank is busy feeding him information.

 

_Sanctum, Decoris System, Sigurd’s Cradle_

_Mean temperature: -50 degrees Celsius_

_Surface gravity: 1.2G_

_WARNING: Carbon dioxide levels and freezing temperatures lethal to most species_

_Rebreather and environmental suit strongly suggested for continuation of life signs_

 

Ugh. He hates the helmet. The air is stuffy and all wrong. He cannot smell. The sides encroach on his peripheral vision and it is like being in the tank again. He takes it off and glares at it. He will put it on when they touch down and not a moment before. But he does not complain as he rides in the shuttle with her and the turian. They sit in the front, while Grunt takes up the whole back seat. The turian goes everywhere with her. He is her rearguard.

Her krantt.

Perhaps some day, he will have a krantt of his own. For now, though, this is more than enough. As the recycled air in the cabin swirls, he smells something strange from the turian. It is a protection smell, a claiming smell.

A mating smell.

He looks at them both anew. They do not touch, but they are still close. Comfortable. He blinks in surprise.

They are mates.

He laughs.

“What?” Shepard twists around to look at him.

“Nothing.”

But he still smiles.

***********

Grunt understands now why Shepard has her own ship and is a commander of men, even if she is so small. He also understands why she takes the turian everywhere.

They are partners. They are extensions of one another, like an arm or a leg. If he didn’t know any better, he would say they read each other’s minds. They act in tandem, the one moving before the other even speaks. She rushes in, blasting enemies with biotics and her shotgun, while the turian covers her flanks. She throws enemies into the air and he hits them with his rifle like a skeet shoot. They are good mates, well-matched in their skills and talents.

Grunt actually does not know what to do. The Tank has taught him to fight, practically searing the lessons in his brain, but not how to work with a team. He tries to hang back and watch them, to learn, but the excitement boils in his blood when he smells the sharp metal of discharged guns, hears the distinct sizzle of a biotic warp as it rips an enemy apart, and he just cannot stand it a moment more. He rushes in with a bellow, smashing faces, the _blat_ of his shotgun ringing out as he fires it into a chest. He mashes someone with his shoulder and stomps on them, his armored boot sinking deep into soft flesh and he hears the crunch of broken bone and pulverized cartilage. He picks up a live body and throws it into a wall where it makes a heavy wet _thwack._

His nerves sing, his fingers itch.

It is glorious.

The turian shoots snipers so far away, Grunt would not have known they existed, had they not fallen from the balconies, neat holes in their heads, and some with no heads at all. The turian is cocky; he crows victory into his comm after a particularly nice shot.

_Scoped and dropped!_

A lucky round punches through the turian’s armor and he hisses in pain and collapses behind a crate. Shepard already seemed angry, but now she has gone positively feral. Her biotic corona flares bright and she screams a challenge to the enemy that shot her turian.

_You best give your heart to Jesus, ‘cause your ass is MINE!_

Shepard has the best battle cries. Some of them don't make sense to Grunt, but she flings them into the air and they ring out, angry like krogan. She explodes into a snapping streak of blue and reappears thirty yards away, crushing the face of a surprised batarian with a biotically charged fist. She turns and smiles a smile frightening in its fierceness, manic in its satisfaction. Shepard hates batarians. He is not sure why, but he can smell the rage on her, sharp and acrid like a lightning storm.

Grunt does not know what to think about the four-eyed, smooth-skinned creatures. The Tank says they are weak, but it says that about everything. The turian is sitting against a crate, looking only sheepish and not dead. She stands over him, scanning for other enemies, fists crackling with blue fire. Her eyes are hard and dark as stones and she makes the human equivalent of a growl. Grunt hopes the turian knows this female’s worth, because it is without measure.

Yes, Shepard is strong. She should be krogan, but she is not.

No matter.

What ever ridiculous shape she takes is irrelevant. He will follow her for now.

**********

Grunt's omnitool chimes, the one the quarian let him borrow. Shepard has sent a few audio files.

He opens one and hears musics. Human growls and scream-sound instruments made into musics.

 

It _snarls_.

_**Dirty deeds and they're done dirt cheap!**_

It _wails_.

**_Concrete shoes, cyanide, TNT!_ **

It _howls_.

_**Neckties, contracts, HIGH VOLTAGE!** _

It is awesome.

**********

He has armor. He has a gun.

This gun is not his favorite. The Tank tells him there are better ones, but it is what he has.

He laughs because he doesn’t need it.

He can kill without one.

***********

Shepard is concerned that he sleeps on the floor.

He tells her krogan don’t sleep in beds, but if Grunt has learned anything about her, it is that she is remarkably stubborn. Once she takes something into her head, there is no going back, and not even the universe itself can stop her. She is determined to find a krogan bed, even though they didn't exist. She eventually gives up, but true to form, she makes her own solution and puts a huge pile of blankets and pillows in the corner.

They still smell like her from when she carried them in her arms to his room. She had a goofy grin on her face as she fluffed them up and arranged them first this way, and then that. She reminded him of some tiny bird, flitting around, making its nest just so.

But it wasn't her nest.

She had made it for him.

**********

There is a package on Grunt’s desk.

Shepard insisted he have the desk so he has a place to sit while he reads and researches. He researches all sorts of things; war, weapons, armies, and even animals. He especially likes the Earth dinosaurs. They are huge and full of teeth, claws, and spikes. They terrorized the planet and killed and ate whatever they wanted. They were so strong, the only thing able to destroy them was a massive asteroid that plunged the entire jungle world into a catastrophic winter.

He turns the large cylindrical package over in his hands. He spies a tiny little tag, and catches the piece of paper between his fingers, careful not to bend it. His omnitool (the quarian grudgingly let him keep it) spits out a translation of the strange combinations of rounded swirls and straight sticks.

 

_Grunt,_

_Got these from Earth. My brother had a set like this when he was young. Have fun!_

_Shepard_

 

A gift. The Tank is suspiciously silent on this subject. He has never received a gift before. Equipment, armor, food; he has received all those things, but they were given so he could kill enemies more efficiently. Even the bed is for sleeping so he can be well rested and more dangerous.

This is just for him, for no reason at all. It is unprecedented.

He opens it and dumps the contents out onto the desk. He cannot believe what spills out.

Dinosaurs.

Earth dinosaurs of all colors and shapes, made of thick plastic, just like her brother has.

**********

Grunt runs an extranet search.

 

**Search: shepard**

_Your query has returned too many results. Input a new query._

 

He hates it when computers tell him what do. At least the blue eyeball and the geth make requests rather than demands.

 

 **Search:** **commander shepard**

_Did you mean: Shepard, Rosali Aud?_

 

Of course that’s what he means, stupid computer! How does the quarian do what she does? It is impossible to fathom. He tries again.

 

**Search: rosali aud shepard commander brother**

_Rosali Aud Shepard was born April 11, 2154, on the colony of Mindoir. She survives her family, killed in a batarian slaver attack in September of 2170._

_Mother: Georgiana Grace Shepard, water reclamation technician, July 10, 2132 - September 22, 2170_

_Father: Torsten Eiriksson, agriculturist, June 29, 2128 - September 22, 2170_

_Brother: Jaime Njal Torstensson, minor, October 15, 2152 - September 22, 2170_

_Sister: Caroline Lilija Shepard, minor, January 5, 2164 - September 22, 2170_

 

The youngest human is only 6 years old.

Shepard's parents and older brother would probably be powerful warriors and he understands why the batarians destroyed them. But why kill the youngest, only a whelp with no teeth? There is no glory in that. It would be a mewling, pathetic thing, not even worth killing. There are pictures next to each entry. Shepard has her mother's dark eyes and hair but looks nothing like her father. Her tiny yellow haired sister is just staring at the camera, and her eyes are huge and blue. Her brother is smiling, the same smile Shepard smiles right before she laughs.

Grunt has never had a brother. He cannot understand it.

He wishes he could.

**********

Shepard calls him ‘darlin’ in her slow, languorous language. He does not know exactly what it means. He knows it is a strange human term of endearment; it means she likes him. But when she is especially upset, she also says things like ‘bless your little heart,’ but in a voice that means anything but that. In fact, he finds that violence usually follows that phrase.

**********

The Tank used to be a whisper in the back of his mind. It provided him with useful information, and would occasionally put in its ‘two cents’, as Shepard likes to say.

The Tank is only getting louder.

He tries to relax, surf the extranet, watch funny vids about pyjacks, research some more about Earth animals. He has learned a lot about sharks. And bears. And lions. Wolverines and something called a honey badger are interesting too. They all fight with their sharp teeth and claws, fiercer than any varren. The Tank never told him about these creatures. It obviously did not focus on the important things. He is getting wholeheartedly sick of its obnoxious voice. It flashes messages of hate and anger that are not his own.

He is starting to worry something is wrong with him.

Maybe he isn’t perfect. Maybe he is a mistake like all the others. At least they fought to be strong. He just _is_. Maybe that is what makes him weak right now.

Pacing around his room in a steady circle, he goes faster and faster, trying to get The Tank to be quiet, just for a moment, but it still pounds in his skull.

He roars and throws a crate.

That was no good. He has just thrown the crate on his dinosaurs, the ones Shepard had searched for and had flown across the galaxy from Earth, just for him. The same kind her dead brother used to have when he was alive.

He pounds his fist into the bulkhead, upset not only about this ridiculous rage, but also his dinosaurs and Shepard’s loss on Mindoir that he does not understand. He hears the pop of a snapping bone, but it does nothing to quiet The Tank. He feels the bone start to harden and heal. It will take days to completely regenerate, but it will. Perhaps it is a curse, to heal like this; to be broken and fuse back together, no matter what. He hears the door slide open. He smells her scent of gunmetal, ozone, and lemons before he even sees her.

The commander. She will know what to do.

“Shepard.” He says her name, but it comes out more like a warning.

“Grunt, why is this room tore slap up?” Her hands are on her hips, and she looks annoyed.

“I am angry, Shepard.”

“I gathered that. Mind telling me what’s going on?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why I am angry. I just am.” His hands clench and release, clench and release. He is starting to look like the nervous quarian.

“It's okay, darlin'. Tell me about it'.” She is moving closer to him, voice quiet and reassuring. She does not know enough to be afraid.

“I see red fog and it covers my eyes and all I can feel is blood and it burns.” He backs away from her, and the Tank’s whispers are loud as screams now.

_She is soft._

_She is useless._

_She is weak._

He could hurt her. She isn’t wearing her helmet. He could take her by the dark fluffy hair and smash her face into the window. The blood would be a bright, beautiful red. It would gush down her front and her white little teeth would crunch and break. She has no armor, just her thin clothes with the thousand pockets. He could strangle her, choke the life right out of her long, pale neck. He could throw her into the bulkhead and stomp on her until she wasn’t the right shape anymore. He could do all of those things.

 _You should_ , The Tank whispers. _The female is unworthy, unfit to live._

Instead, Grunt sprints head first into the plasteel window. He feels his headplate crack and the fog clears a little.

“See, Shepard? Why do that? That accomplishes nothing.” He paces and she looks from the spiderweb cracks in the window back to him.

“Do you feel sick?” Her voice and eyes are soft. He does not know how to answer that. He does not feel sick, he feels _wrong_.

“I don’t like this. Fury is my choice, not a sickness.”

“EDI, bring me everything you’ve got on krogan illnesses, and tell Mordin I want to meet him in the med bay immediately.” Her long, sinuous words are clipped and short, a sure sign of worry.

She worries about him.

She had pulled him from the tank, found him powerful enemies to fight, made him a bed, sent him growling musics, gave him Earth dinosaurs, and he had wanted to kill her. Not just kill her, but completely destroy her and crush her corpse to jelly.

He is not perfect.

Not even close.


	2. Chapter 2

They land on Tuchanka and Grunt actually trembles, not that anyone can see it. The scent of dust and something tinny and metallic in the air flood his nose. The sun is hot and bright on his hide, and he soaks it in. This is his home, yet it is the furthest thing from it.

It is good to get out. Ever since he imagined killing Shepard and The Tank told him to, he kept his distance from her and stayed in the hold. He knew why The Tank wanted him to kill her, and specifically her.

She is the strongest.

He sees other krogan, real krogan. Krogan who were born from other krogan; krogan who were sprinkled with the dust of Tuchanka after they drew first breath. They smell like Tuchanka, and he notices that he does not.

He smells like cut and pasted strands of double helix, polypeptide chains in petri dishes, and beakers of brightly colored chemicals.

He is a mistake, a failure. He does not belong here. He can tell the others smell it on him. Some look at him in disgust, some in wonder. Shepard though, she plows through ‘like she owns the place.’ She marches right through the crowds and up the rubble stairs to the warlord.

The old krogan yells her name, jumps up from his throne and grabs Shepard in his arms, lifting her off the ground and swinging her around in a wide arc. Grunt starts forward to kill this old one for hurting Shepard, but stops short. Shepard is just laughing from under the red krogan’s bulk and trying to link her too-short arms around his hump.

The Tank said nothing about this. Smashing head plates, yes. Strange grabbing, no.

Grunt looks closely at the old krogan. He is scarred, red, and very large; a bit taller than himself, but not as wide. The Tank helpfully supplies ‘Urdnot Wrex’ and Grunt can do nothing but stare. This is the Urdnot Wrex, the Urdnot Wrex of Shepard’s fantastic stories.

Shepard has the best stories, sometimes even better than the old man's. She had told him of Urdnot Wrex, the mighty krogan warlord who was doing more than simply fighting. He was uniting Tuchanka.

At first, Grunt thought it was a funny joke, like the picture of the pyjack dressed up in human clothes driving a tomkah. Uniting Tuchanka and telling krogan not to kill each other would be like gathering all the stars and telling them not to burn.

He sees it now, though. The old krogan is still young. He is the strongest on this planet, and possibly beyond. Grunt grins and wonders who would win if Shepard and Wrex fought.

“So, you finally get around to it, Vakarian?” Wrex rumbles as he waggles his eye-ridges in a very human movement Grunt recognizes from the male engineer with the dirty mind.

The turian’s head snaps up. Very rarely is the turian uncomfortable. He is always easy swagger and confidence. He is definitely uncomfortable now. He vigorously shakes his head in the negative and waves his large hands frantically in the air, the human gesture for, ‘please stop talking.’

Shepard turns around, confused, and Wrex laughs harder while the turian quickly returns his hands to his sides and glares. Grunt doesn’t get it. What hasn’t the turian done that he should? Something with Shepard, or he wouldn’t be embarrassed. Why would he be embarrassed in front of his mate?

Oh.  Oh.

Shepard doesn’t know they are mates yet.

Grunt bursts out laughing too.

“I didn’t know she didn’t know! Why doesn’t she know?” He looks to Garrus. Garrus just bows his head and pinches his nose like he has a headache.

“Shepard, you are as sharp as a mashed potato,” Grunt declares.

Wrex shouts in laughter and even the turian huffs. Her jaw drops and she just stares at him. “Using my own hick-ness against me. Unbelievable.” She waves her hand dismissively.

Her face creases down into to a frown when she remembers why they came in the first place. “Wrex, what’s wrong with our boy?”

Wrex walks around Grunt, sniffing, poking and prodding. Grunt doesn’t like it, but Shepard gives him a look that means hold still, so he does.

“There’s nothing wrong with this one. He smells like a lab, but he’s healthy.”

“I can’t be healthy. I feel all wrong.”

“Well of course you do, whelp! You need to take the Rite, like any adult male. You’ll be useless as rabid varren shit until you do.” Wrex looks thoughtful. “You’ll need to find the shaman. Only he decides who is strong enough to take the Rite.”

The shaman agrees to let Grunt take the Rite, (whatever that means) and many krogan are angry, one in particular, Gatatog Uvenk. He says everything about Grunt is a lie, that he is not true krogan.

Shepard smiles the little smile, the dangerous one. She draws back quick as a snake and slams her forehead into his face, right under the plate. Uvenk stumbles back, blood spurting between the fingers he holds to his broken nose.

“She is more krogan than you!” Grunt bellows while Shepard just smiles a pleased smile.

Uvenk swears he will settle this, but Grunt doesn’t care. He will prove his worth. He is krogan no matter where he came from. He is engineered for perfection, destined for greatness.

**********

Grunt's blood pounds in his ears and his nerves fizzle with the battle-chemicals. This is it. They have killed the varren, destroyed the klixen, and thrashed the harvesters until they fled like cowards. As Shepard says, he is 'happier'n a tornado in a trailer park.' He has watched vids of violent Earth weather. Tornadoes are his favorite and he is pleased that Shepard thinks of him and tornadoes together.

Shepard mashes the keystone a final time, and for once, he and The Tank are in accord. It has slipped to the back of his mind, offering information, but keeping its opinions to itself.

A rumbling echoes through his feet, expanding in his chest, rattling his teeth. Maw, The Tank whispers.

He roars in excitement and pounds his fists together. He will destroy this enemy, he and his krantt. They will tear it to pieces and make it into nothing but meat. Shepard and her turian are strong, more than worthy, and he will follow them to the end.

The maw breaks from the ground with an unearthly shriek. It stirs something in his blood, something ancient and unnamed. He fights and bleeds and bellows with his krantt, his 'kinfolk' as Shepard says, by his side. Shepard screams and blasts the maw's face with warp after warp. The turian is all glacial calm, firing his rifle with uncanny accuracy.

It is perfection.

Grunt fires his final rocket into its open mouth and the detonation is muffled deep in its gullet. The maw explodes, raining acid and stinking, green tissue. He is bathed in it as he roars his victory to the skies.

It is the most magnificent moment in his short and violent life.

**********

Uvenk says he is impressed, but in a voice that suggests he is not.

Grunt despises him. He is weak, with his loopholes and bargains and selfishness. Uvenk is nothing like Wrex or Shepard. The Tank thinks Grunt should kill him where he stands.

No, that’s not right. Grunt thinks Grunt should kill him where he stands. Shepard and the turian seem to be in agreement.

**********

Later, Shepard tells him he can stay on Tuchanka if he wants. Her eyes are shining with a strange wetness he does not understand. He is confused. Why would she send him away after his victory, after he has proven without a doubt that he is true krogan?

“Do you not want me on your ship anymore, Battlemaster?”

Shepard’s already too-big eyes get bigger and her lip quivers. “Of course I want you on the Normandy!" Her voice sounds funny, like it is choking. "But I want you to be happy, and if staying on Tuchanka makes you happy, then that makes me happy.”

She does not want him to be a simple dog of war, to kill her enemies and nothing more.

She wants him to be happy.

Grunt shakes his head in wonder.

His Battlemaster truly has no match.

**********

 

Shepard has asked him to come up out of the hold for dinner.

He does not know what to make of this. Some of the humans on the ship still fear him after his outburst. He meets them in the corridors, and they look at him with their big, nervous eyes, and scurry back the way they came.

But he will do as his Battlemaster asks. She has reasons, and they are good enough for him.

He eats his ration at the table, alone. He does not mind this either, but sometimes he gets tired of having no one around to talk to. The turian sidles up and nods, sitting across from him, and opens a ration of what looks like grey mush.

Grunt cannot believe The Tank had said the turian was weak.

The turian is deadly. He is fast and sure, and the whole side of his face is one big scar. Not many krogan can boast surviving a rocket to the face, but this turian not only still lives, he makes war.  Shepard, strongest of them all, has chosen him as her mate, and she has chosen well. Grunt can finally smell the turian on her, and visa versa, the way mates are supposed to smell. He smiles and his mandibles don’t match.

No, Grunt can make his own decisions. The Tank is obviously not right about everything. It said humans are soft, but Shepard is fearless. She has told him of her father's people, the Vikings, and how they were so fierce, they sometimes fought just for the fun of it. She tells him of Aud, her namesake, the strongest and most loyal Viking female, who fought as fierce as any male to protect her mate.

The other humans are nothing to snuff at either.

The skinny female with the painted skin could rip apart both his livers and at least a few lungs with her biotics before he took her down. He likes her foul mouth and angry grin. Shepard says she is 'mean enough to hunt bears with a stick.' He has seen the bears, and he thinks Shepard is right.

The old male is blind in one eye and full of scars and tales of how he got them. Grunt can listen to all his stories of war and fighting and glory and not ever get tired of them. He keeps an ancient gun, one that doesn't even work anymore, but Grunt can see battles won in its scratches and dents, and he likes it.

The tiny thief, while not strong like the others, is not afraid of him at all. She hangs in the rafters, invisible, but he can still smell her, a flower scent that tickles his nose. He tells her so, and she just laughs her little laugh that sounds like bells. She materializes with a soft pop, swinging upside down, grinning like a pyjak and he can’t help but grin too.

In fact, the more he thinks about it, almost every creature on the ship is strong, not like Grunt, but still strong in their own way.

The asari is ancient. She has seen and done more in her lifetime than Grunt can imagine, more than The Tank could ever tell him. He can hear the quiet crackle of biotics when she meditates and knows there is great power there, yet she simply holds it in her hands.

The drell is so fast, even faster than the turian, faster than Grunt can follow. He smells of sickness and sour grief, but still he fights. He is silent, and the silence is something Grunt can understand.

The quarian is as brave as she is delicate. The smallest tear in her suit could kill her, but she still fights too. She fights with a shotgun, a killer robot, and style. Grunt doesn't think much about beautiful things, but the quarian is quick and graceful in her dark suit with her glowing eyes, like the Earth panther Shepard had told him about.

It would be stupid to assume that all creatures had to be strong like him. He has learned that intelligence is a strength too.

The salarian is smart. His kind brought the krogan to their knees with science, and by all rights Grunt should hate him. But this doctor is different. He is deadly with more than just his mind. He lights things on fire, and if there is anything Grunt respects, it is fire.

The geth is also smart and so curious. He, not it, is definitely alive. No normal machine would ask so many questions. He wants to know about everything. He smells of nothing but metal and plastic, yet wears a piece of Shepard's old armor, the armor she died in, like a hard won spoil of war.

It went on and on the more he thought. Almost every single person on this ship is dangerous.

The grey haired doctor could kill him in his sleep with a needle and tiny glass vial of chemical.

The blue eyeball could vent them all out into space.

The cook could poison him.

Even the glass-bone pilot could crash them into a planet if he wanted.

“Grunt.”

Yes, Shepard's krantt, and therefore his by extension, are all deadly.

Well, except the human female called Kelly. Shepard says she is as useful as 'a screen door on a submarine,' and Grunt is inclined to agree.

“Grunt.”

The Tank had chanted that they were all weak, all unworthy. It had demanded that he kill them, to smear their different colored blood on the walls, but he sees now that it knows nothing important at all.

Grunt makes his own decisions.

“GRUNT!”

A tiny hand makes a sharp snapping sound under his nose.

He blinks and comes back to the present. Shepard is now sitting across from him. She and the turian are sitting close together, and Grunt finds that he likes to see them that way. They are strong together.

“You thinkin' big thoughts, darlin’?” she asks him in that strange, long language that is different from the other humans. He likes the way it coils up and then stretches out smooth. She smiles, but not the dangerous one. This one says she is genuinely curious.

“Yes.”

She cocks her head like the turian does. “And?”

“Your ship is strong. Your crew is strong. Even the glass-bone pilot is strong, in his own, puny way."

"Is that all?"

"Yes."

She nods, satisfied.

"Grunt, I've got a surprise for you. You want to go down to the armory with me when we're finished and take a look?"

"YES!" he all but roars, bouncing in his seat.

He can't help it. Wonderful things come from the armory. Weapons that shoot chunks of hot metal and fire, even one that shoots beams of red light that disintegrates everything it touches. That one is not his favorite though. It is not loud enough.

"Finish your dinner and we can go."

He shovels the food in as fast as he can and chokes. He can't breathe. Neither set of lungs is working.

She is behind him, pounding on his hump with surprisingly strong blows. He guesses she is using both fists and maybe a little biotics. He coughs up a chunk of unchewed varren meat and blinks and gasps as air pours back into his lungs in a rush.

"Lord almighty! Act like you've got some raising and chew a little!" Shepard chides.

He is learning new things all the time.

"Choking is dangerous," he tells her.

She shakes her head but smiles. "Yes, very. Even krogan can choke to death. You might have two pairs of lungs, but if neither of 'em can get air..."

She shrugs her shoulders and lifts both hands to the side, the human gesture for "what can you do?". He is getting good at recognizing gestures. The old man and painted female have taught him all the insulting ones humans have. The drell doesn’t seem to have any, and the turian won't teach him any of his. Grunt thinks Shepard won't let him.

Grunt carefully but quickly eats the rest of his dinner, putting his plate away in the washing unit. Shepard said he needed to clean up after himself.

She said he was krogan, not an animal.

As they walk down the hall to the armory, he thinks about all the other things Shepard has told him. She tells him that his people are strong, that they are worth more than the galaxy thinks. She says they are holding themselves back by fighting with one another.

She says they could be so much more, and when he looks at her face when she says it, he believes her.

The doors to the armory whoosh open and the dark human grins with his white teeth. Even if Grunt could not see anything special about him, this male has the guns. Shepard goes rummaging around in a locker and pulls out a large package wrapped in shiny green paper. She almost looks shy.

"I know you don't have a regular birthday, ah, you know, with the genetics and the tank and all..." She shakes her head and plows on. "I was thinkin', maybe this could be your new birthday, since you're a bona fide krogan now."

He looks at her as if she has grown a second head. Birthday? He has heard of these. The dirty minded engineer had one and got so drunk he threw up on the floor and told the female engineer he loved her and wanted to have her babies.

No, birthdays were for species that measured their lives in decades and couldn't hold their liquor.

She sighs and thrusts the box into his hands. "Here go."

He looks at it curiously and turns it over in his hands. The box is large and fairly hefty, but not overly so.

“Open it!” Shepard seems excited, bouncing on the balls of her tiny feet.

He carefully rips the paper off a sleek grey rectangular box. He pops the clever little seals and the box opens with a quiet hiss.

Then he sees it. The Tank sees it. They both howl with glee.

“SHEPARD!”

He palms the M-300 Claymore, the most beautiful, amazing, fantastic weapon he has ever laid eyes on while in or out of The Tank. He wants to smash his headplate into hers in thanks, but remembers humans don’t do that or have those, so he sweeps her up in a bonecrushing hug like Wrex had.

“YOU ARE THE BEST BATTLEMASTER IN THE UNIVERSE!”

She keeps making funny squeaks, so he hugs her tighter. The squeaking stops and he remembers that humans are very small, and without their armor on, can be very fragile. He sets her down gently, propping her up with both arms to make sure she doesn’t fall. She gasps and coughs and holds her ribs and grins all at the same time.

“I’m glad you like it, darlin’,” she wheezes.

“Like is not the right word, Shepard! This will kill anything!”

She just smiles as he strokes the barrel reverently.

“Birthdays are awesome,” he whispers.

**********

Grunt is bored.

Shepard has been so busy, she's been 'runnin' all over hell and half of Georgia.' Grunt does not know about this Georgia, but does know she has been all over the Citadel, doing all sorts of ridiculous things for ridiculous people.

He went to visit the drell and the asari, but the green skinned man and blue woman both made him leave because he could not sit still. The salarian was busy running tests and said he could not be bothered. The quarian and the tiny thief are with Shepard, and the geth is 'backing up all pertinent information to the collective,' and 'interruption of data flow' would be 'sub-optimal' and 'inefficient.'

Grunt sighs, but decides to mess with his new gun. He loves it. It is hard to keep his hands off of it.

He is in the cargo bay where he has set up some crates and lined up bottles on them. He thinks it is shooting to the left, but there are so many projectiles coming out all at once, it is difficult to be sure. He blasts the bottles and they shatter everywhere and the liquid inside sprays and sometimes catches fire. It is strangely satisfying, killing bottles.

Grunt notices the turian standing behind him, quiet, just watching.

"What?"

"Want me to take a look at that? I use a rifle myself, but I'm good at tweaking things."

Grunt looks at the turian, Shepard's turian. He seems genuinely interested. Grunt slowly hands the gun over.

The turian turns it over in his hands, lifting it as if testing its weight. He walks over to the gun bench, motioning Grunt to follow. He tinkers and tweaks and calibrates, explaining each step as he works.

Grunt is fascinated. He had no idea you could do so much to a gun to make it kill better. There were shredders, chokes, blades, high caliber barrels; it was wonderful. The turian didn't just put them on, he fiddled with them until they were perfect.

The turian gently hands the gun back, sets up some more bottles, and tells Grunt to make sure he cleans up when he is done, or Shepard will 'have a box of kittens.'

Grunt saw Shepard do that when the painted female and the engineered female in the white suit met in the mess hall and fought.

He does not want a repeat performance.


	3. Chapter 3

**********

Grunt has received a very strange message.

 

_Hey whelp,_

_Females need you on Tuchanka. Get here quick or I'll put my boot up your ass._

_Wrex_

 

Grunt does not understand it. Maybe the turian or Shepard will know.

The turian is fiddling with the big gun again, like he always does. Shepard is there too, legs twisted and folded up in impossible angles as she sits in a strange bowl-shaped piece of furniture.

She has found a bed for the turian too.

With her headphones in, she sifts through piles of datapads, swaying to a beat that Grunt cannot hear.

“Aww, yeah!” she says, throwing her hands around like she is hitting something with them. Then she throws back her head and lets loose a many-toned hunting cry he has never heard her make before, but it is old and wild, like fires and storms, and she sings.

 

_We come from the land of the ice and snow,_

_From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow_

_The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands,_

_To fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming!_

 

The turian does not seem concerned with her sounds and keeps up with his tinkering, but he taps a long clawed finger in time with her growly song.

 

_On we sweep with threshing oar,_

_Our only goal will be the western shore._

 

Grunt has heard the human musics, with their scratchy, screaming voices that sometimes go low and soft or sharp and clear, but never realized his Battlemaster could make the same sounds. He stands and listens, spellbound, because she sings of war and fighting and glory.

 

_We come from the land of the ice and snow,_

_From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow,_

_How soft your fields so green, can whisper tales of gore,_

_Of how we calmed the tides of war, we are your overlords_

 

Grunt shakes himself free and shows the note to the turian, who huffs and pokes Shepard.

“On we sweep with- Wha?!” she says loudly, head snapping up and looking wildly around her. The turian motions to his ears and she tilts her head like she doesn't understand. He shows her the note and she quickly takes the headphones out.

“You want to handle this?” he asks her.

Shepard grins a varren grin, and shakes her head. “Oh no. He asked you first.”

The turian gives her a pleading look. “But he’s yours.”

“Nuh-uh,” she says in the voice that teases. “It'll be good for you. Besides, this is man-talk.”

The turian sighs. He turns to Grunt and looks at him for a long time. “You remember Clan Gatatog, and how they didn't want to give you full rights?”

Grunt vaguely recalls something about that, but mostly remembers how weak and stupid Uvenk was.

“Well, since you’re Clan Urdnot, you have full rights now.”

Grunt stares at him.

The turian rubs the back of his neck. Shepard grins but says nothing, her chin in her hands, watching them with all the interest she usually gives an Urban Combat League match.

“They're impressed with you. They want to...you know,” he finishes, vaguely waving a hand in a motion that does not translate.

Grunt does not know who ‘they’ are or what ‘they’ want to do. Shepard is doubled over, shoulders shaking, letting out an occasional snort.

“Who?” Grunt asks.

“Females!”

“But what do they want from me?” These females are sounding like more trouble than they were worth.

“To have younglings!” the turian blurts out. Grunt stares at him some more.

“Me?”

“Yes, you! Why not you? Aren't you genetically perfect or something?”

He is, but it is still confusing. Then again, the females of his species must be somewhat similar to the males. They would like strength. They wouldn’t be interested in science and genes. “Maybe they heard about the maw,” Grunt decides.

Shepard comes up out of the pillows, fanning her eyes and trying to get her oddly timed snorts and ‘hoooo’ sounds under control. “I'm sure all of Tuchanka has heard about you, darlin’. The girls all want you because they think you'd be a good daddy for their babies.”

“Why does everything sound better when you say it?” the turian huffs.

Shepard gets another sort of smile, one Grunt does not see often except when it is directed at the turian, a slow smile of secrets in the dark, like the tiny thief searches for. “Oh, I dunno. I like the way you say things just fine.”

The turian wiggles his mandibles and goes back to his gun.

“Well!” she says, clapping her hands the way she does when she has made a decision, “I’ll just call Wrex and see.”

She has already called him up as she stands there, tapping her foot impatiently, left hand at her ear.

“Hey!…Wait, who’re you? No, get me Wrex….What?! You get his stubby tail out here right now or I'll reach right through time and space and put you on your ass myself!....Yes, it's Commander Shepard!....That’s right, you will,” she growls under her breath.

“Heeeyyyy! Dino-Boy!....Yeah, yeah, King of Tuchanka, but you’re always Dino to me. What's this about Grunt, now?.... Uh-huh….I see. Well, fine, but she’d better be nice. And cute. And funny….It does too matter! She'd better be the best thing with three livers or you ’n me are gonna mix, you understand?....Pssh, don't you worry about me, you just try not to get knocked off your rubble pile. And get rid of what's-his-face….Wreav!....Why? Cause I don't trust him, that's why!.... Well, you just remember that, cause it'll happen quicker’n a knife-fight in a phone booth….Yes, it’s a real thing….Look it up! I can't explain everything to you!.....Oh, that.”

She flicks her eyes towards the turian, and they flash for a fraction of a second, and Grunt has no idea what it could mean.

“Fine, it’s fine. More than fine…...Shut your cake hole, Dino!…..Mmhmm. We’ll see. Take care, now.”

She turns to them and grins. “EDI,” she says to the ceiling where the blue eyeball always hides, “tell your worse half to plot a course for Tuchanka. We're gonna snag Grunt a girlfriend.”

**********

“What?”

Grunt is in the lab with the salarian, who is telling all sorts of ridiculous tales that cannot possibly be true.

“As I feared. Imprint incomplete. Read and watch these. Memorize them. Krogan mating rituals very complicated. Dangerous.” The salarian fiddles with his omnitool and many files are transferred to Grunt's inbox. He goes to open one, but the salarian waves his hand.

“Take files to your quarters,” he says, looking both irritated and confused. “Have been told instructional videos ‘embarrassing’ and ‘mortifying’.” He taps his chin in thought. “Perhaps human and turian psyche more delicate than first imagined. But why? Drive to procreate very natural even when impossible. Interesting. Should investigate further...”

**********

Word had gotten around the whole ship about his ‘date’, as Shepard calls it. People stop by to see him, many more than usual. He is almost always alone, and so talking to so many people is strange, but Shepard had said that conversation is just another way to learn. The first to come to his room is the painted female.

“What the fuck were you watching last night? It sounded like two dinosaurs screwing in an shuttle hangar.”

“Not dinosaurs. Krogan.”

She gives him a funny look and leaves without saying another word.

The old man stops by and offers congratulations, but with the warning not to let her “get her claws into you’. Grunt is not completely sure what that means.

The quarian, thief, and useless red-haired female come in like a flock of noisy birds, giggling and making high-pitched sounds.

“Isn’t it cute?!” the thief says.

“So cute!” the quarian squeals, hands clasped together.

“The cutest!” the useless female echoes.

“What's her name?”

“Is she pretty?”

“Girls like it when you tell them they're pretty.”

He throws a tray of rations at them and they squawk and scatter.

The pilot hobbles down and gives Grunt an Earth beer, and the drell tells them that females are always stronger than males, and when you find a good one, to never let go.

The turian gives advice that seems too easy, but Grunt listens carefully, because the turian knows many things worth learning.

“Do whatever she wants, whenever she wants, and you’ll both be happy.”

**********

They touch down on Tuchanka, and Grunt no longer feels like a stranger. The air smells good, and he likes how the dust makes his hide dry and warm. Wrex clasps his wrist and lightly headbutts him, not a challenge, but a greeting.

“Looks like I don't have to put my boot up your ass after all. You ready?”

Grunt nods once. Shepard smiles at him, and she knows he’s nervous, even though he shouldn't be. She takes his wrist and squeezes. He looks down and almost laughs at the way her tiny hand can only grip halfway around. “You'll do fine, darlin’,” she says softly, and waves as they drive away.

**********

They drive for what seems like hours. Grunt is stuffed in the cargo compartment, because he is not allowed to know the camp’s location. They finally stop, and he is surprised to get out and see nothing at all. They have stopped in the middle of a wasteland, and for Tuchanka, ‘that's saying something’.

They are met by a large old female, almost as tall as Grunt, but much thinner. The tomkah abandons him, driving away until it is nothing but a plume of dust. They both walk in silence for miles, and finally come to an outcropping of rocks that looks like nothing at all. The old female winds around, and she is careful, sniffing the air for threats he cannot smell himself. He wonders if living on a ship has made him soft, but perhaps there is simply nothing to smell here. Picking her way across the rocks, she follows an invisible trail until she comes to a large boulder, indistinguishable from the rest. Circling around it, he sees that it hides the entrance to a hewn stone hall.

Everything about the female camp is strange. It looks strange, and smells even stranger, a smell that is both light and soft, yet somehow heavy and insistent. The halls are lined with dim lights, and the stone echoes under his boots. It is dry and cool, much cooler than the surface. They come to a stop in a larger room.

“Armor and guns,” the old female says, hand held out. When he does not move, she barks at him. “Now!”

“Will I get them back?”

“Well, it won't fit my hump, will it?” she snarks.

He looks at her skeptically, but hands over his shotgun, grip first. “My Battlemaster gave me that gun, so-”

“Yes, yes. Males and their guns. It’s all they think about, so now we live in holes like vermin.”

He takes off his armor and the female snorts through her nose. “‘Big’, they said. They weren't joking. You’ll do, I suppose.”

The old female leads him down the twisting passageways, and even with his sharp memory, he knows he will need someone to get him back out again. She says nothing more, even as they pass the young-dens, where impossibly small krogan tumble and roll all over each other, scrapping and laughing.

Grunt wonders what he might have looked like at that age, but he had surely never been that small. He could not imagine any krogan ever being so weak.

Two, one tan and one red, break off from the pile of arms and legs and chase him down the hall, screeching and growling. One latches to his left leg while the other latches on to the right, and Grunt fights down an irrational urge to kick them away. One good stomp and he could squash them flat, but they both just stare up at him with their little yellow eyes and toothless grins, tiny and unafraid. They are fearless for being so small.

“Go, kak-lee-o-saur!” they yell at him, “Go!”

The female keeps walking, so Grunt does too, one youngling clinging to each leg and both laughing hysterically as he stumps down the hallways.

“Faster!” they demand. The old female will not be hurried, so Grunt stamps these new parasites up and down double time, and they shriek with laughter. They swarm all over, up his legs, grabbing his hands and wrists, pulling themselves up with strong, chunky arms like Shepard when she does ‘chin ups’. He lifts them both and they swing from his elbows like pyjaks fighting over a tree branch, each trying to kick the other. He can see almost nothing of the old female, covered and hooded as she is. Only a pair of fierce gold eyes shine out as she stops and turns, getting right up to his nose. She snaps her fingers and the younglings drop from his arms.

“Good kak-lee-o-saur,” one says, patting Grunt’s knee like he is an exceptionally nice pet. The old female growls and they disappear, stifled giggles retreating down the hallway.

“You will follow the rules,” she tells Grunt in the same tone Shepard uses when she ‘means business’.

“She says ‘stop’, you stop. She says ‘leave’, you leave. We may be bred like cattle, but this is our place, our laws. You don’t follow them, you die.” She pulls a shotgun from her robes and lets it dangle lightly from her hand. He sees it is loaded with the red glow of incendiary rounds, a thing every krogan hates. “Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” She nods her head once and seems satisfied. “She might like you. Might not. You smell strange, have strange eyes. We’ll see.”

She raps her knuckles on a heavy door and it opens. A smaller female steps through the doorway. He expected her to be covered up like the old female, but she has nothing on.

Not that Grunt minds.

She stands there, hands on hips that look like they want hands on them, angular yet somehow round. She critically looks him up and down with her sharp green eyes, and Grunt decides she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

“What is your name?” she asks in a voice that sounds like old music.

“Urdnot Grunt.”

“Hmm,” she says, thinking.

“What is yours?”

She stares at him as if she cannot believe what just came out of his mouth. “You don't need to know that.”

“But I want to.”

She stares at him some more, as if trying to make up her mind. “I’ll take this one, Mother,” she finally says, and turning in her heel, she goes back into her room. ‘Mother’ shoves him from behind and shuts the door.

Grunt is not so sure about this anymore. He is perfect, but they do not seem to think so. He feels like a piece of varren meat that no one can decide will cook up good or tough.

“Naxa.”

“What?”

“My name is Naxa. Isn't that what you wanted to know?”

“Naxa,” he says, trying it out loud. Grunt likes it, how it goes up then down, how it makes his tongue move. It's a short name, but sounds longer.

“Yes. Names are important.”

“If they're important, how are you just called Grunt?”

Grunt thinks. “I love battle. I’m good at it. Why not Grunt?”

“That's not much. Every male loves battle. It's because most of them are stupid.”

“Maybe that's why I'm Urdnot, too. I can be smart, learn things, change when I need to.”

She looks at him with her green eyes, and they study his face. “Why haven't you touched me yet?” she asks, moving closer to him, her face tilted up to see his.

“Because you haven't told me to.”

She gives him the same secret-smile that Shepard gives the turian sometimes.

“I think you'd better start.”

**********

Naxa has not told him to leave.

Or stop.

The long files of information the salarian gave him are only partly helpful.

They told him where all the important parts are, and Grunt finds each one interesting, a puzzle to be solved. He does not usually like puzzles, but these ones have such spectacular solutions, that he thinks he could learn to like them. She makes pleased sounds when she does want him, which is often, and Grunt decides the turian’s advice is good. It is hard and sometimes confusing work, making her happy, but she tells him what she wants and how and when, and he learns quickly.

Grunt thinks if Shepard forgot and left Tuchanka without him, he would not be too upset.

However, Naxa does not act at all like the krogan in the vids. She does not fight with him, like they are supposed to. She just wants to be next to him, and even when she wants to be left alone for a while, she sits close by, always touching him, a hand on his arm, a leg nestled up to his own. His favorite is when she digs her fingers into the space where his hump meets his neck. He feels his bones go to jelly, and while it should bother him to be so weak, it doesn't. Grunt asks her things sometimes, even though the files say he shouldn't, but he cannot help it. There are questions in the blank spaces of his mind, things he is sure he should know but doesn’t.

“So, the younglings. Are they all so brave?”

“Most. The males all want to be great warriors, but end up too stupid to tie their own boots. They run off to fight in useless wars and leave us here with nothing. Some are softer. They're smarter too, but no one wants a smart krogan.”

“How old are you?” She had seen krogan grow up. Maybe she would have more answers to fill the blank spaces, to teach him the missing memories.

“I don't know. Fifty? A hundred? Time means nothing here. And you?” She asks, looking sidelong at him. “You're young. Your plate says so.”

It’s true. His is still in pieces that are slowly fusing together while hers is smooth and whole and striped with pretty patterns of yellow, rust, and green. One hundred. Grunt knows krogan live long lives like asari, but he cannot even fathom one hundred. This age, whatever one he is now, is the only one he has ever known.

“I do not know. But I have never been that small. But you are one hundred. You must have had young. What are they like?”

She seems to wilt, and gets a look of shame that Grunt both does not understand and does not like. “I have had young, but none that lived,” she says, so soft and quiet he can barely hear her.

He says nothing, because even if he had a million years to live, he still could not think of anything to say. So he nudges her shoulder with his and she folds herself up under his arm, quiet and still. The silence, which Grunt usually does not mind, is not a good kind. It is dark and thick.

So he finds himself talking far more than the vids said a female would like. He tells her about the Normandy and all its crew, about all the places and things he has seen and learned. How the blue eyeball and glass-bone pilot bicker like mates but aren't, how the drell’s mate was murdered and how he killed her killers, how the thief lost hers too but has him still inside her brain behind her eyes. He tells her of the Hammerhead and his gun that Shepard gave him, how she could sing, of how she died but didn't.

Naxa listens with shining eyes and hardly says anything, just listening. He tells her about the Tank and how he thinks he has mastered it, but how there are times he is not sure, about the empty spaces where memories should be, the ideas he has no words for, and how he wonders if he is missing something important, something vital.

"No," she says. "And even if you are, you'll learn it just like you have everything else." And the way she says it, so sure and confident, he cannot help but believe her.

A few days pass. Maybe. Naxa is right, time means nothing down here. They eat if they are hungry, sleep if they get tired. But she doesn’t send him away, and he thinks he will have a hard time leaving when she does.

It is too bad Shepard needs him to save the galaxy.

But something still irritates him. He knows it shouldn't, but it does anyway. He tries not to think about it, but when she laughs and pushes him away to rest, the thought nibbles at the edges of his brain.

“You have other males that come to you?” he asks her. She says nothing, and for a moment, Grunt thinks she might not answer.

“Yes,” she finally says, but she does not look at him.

“You want them here?”

“No!” she growls, eyes flashing and she is angry. He has not seen her angry yet, and even though she is small, the top of her finely shaped headplate only up to his chin, she is fierce with a rage he does not quite understand.

“Then tell them to leave.”

She gets up and paces, prowling and wild. “I can’t!”

“Why not?”

“Having young is a female’s purpose!” She still paces, and he is reminded of a lion at the human zoos and he does not like the idea of her caged like this.

“That is not my Battlemaster's purpose, and she is a female. She chooses her own purpose. Chooses her own mate. She would tell any others to leave. And if they didn't, she would kill them,” he says confidently.

Naxa slows and stops pacing. “She chose one and no other? Who did she choose?”

“One that makes her happy.”

“That’s not how it works here.”

He knows he is not explaining things well. The thoughts are there, but it is hard to put them into words.

“Shepard says if you want something to be different, you have to change it yourself. If you wait for things to change, you will wait forever.”

Grunt can see something shift in her, and she looks through him, judging and analyzing, as if trying to decide if he might be something, or simply nothing.

Grunt finds he definitely prefers ‘something’ to ‘nothing’.

She blinks, coming up out of whatever trance she had fallen into. “Fine.”

“What?"

She crosses her arms, eyes narrowed and sparking, and she is beautiful. “Fine, I said! But you have to come back sometimes and see me, just me. And you have to write. You don't write, and I’ll gut you. No dying, either.”

The dying part might be difficult, but he would try to do all those things. And as she stalks back towards him with that secret-smile, Grunt decides trying does not sound bad at all.

**********

“Christ on a cracker, Wrex! Eight days?! You better not have broke him!”

“He’s fine, Shepard,” Wrex says laughing. “See? He's in better shape than you left him. All...glowy.”

It is true. Grunt has not felt so good since he killed the thresher maw. “Naxa said-”

Wrex frowns as he interrupts. “She told you her name? They don't tell anyone their names. How?”

“I asked her.”

“You asked her.” Grunt doesn't understand what the ‘big deal’ is, as Shepard says. “Yes. I asked her, she told me I didn't need to know, I told her I wanted to know, and she told me her name was Naxa. She’s smart and funny and scary. I like her.”

Shepard crosses her arms and harrumphs. “Eight days! I bet you do like her. Hell, _I_ like her.”

“Naxa said I should come again soon, whenever I wanted. Maybe next week?” Grunt says hopefully.

“No. Get off my planet and go help Shepard. That's what you're for, not sitting around chasing tails.”

Grunt is disappointed, but Shepard says disappointments are sometimes part of life. “That's ok. Naxa said I should write.”

“Don't worry, Romeo,” she whispers up at him as they walk away, doing that funny winking thing that humans do. “I’m sure I can find lots of reasons to come back to Tuchanka. Maybe I'll get to headbutt Wreav next time.”

He does not know this ‘Romeo’, but is glad that Shepard understands. He is suddenly struck by a problem that he has not had to worry about yet.

“Shepard?” “What's up, darlin’?”

“She told me to write, and if I didn’t, that she would gut me.”

“I like this girl!” Shepard says with her flat-tooth grin. “So what's the problem?”

“You might have to teach me the spelling.”


	4. Chapter 4

**********

Grunt hasn't seen Shepard so angry in a very long time.

She is staring at the human who is hooked up to the machines, to the geth. Both her and the captive human have water leaking out of their eyes and running down their faces. She turns to the man's brother and asks him questions.

"He's your brother," she says after every excuse the human doctor gives. Each time she says it, she gets quieter and quieter, but Grunt hears the cold rage in her voice and knows she will likely kill this doctor when she has what information she needs. He is right, she raises her shotgun, but her turian places a light hand on her shoulder. She shakes him off, but does not shoot the sniveling human doctor.

She just cracks him in the face with the butt of her gun. He cries out in pain and collapses. She laughs, but there is no joy in it and it snap freezes the air around her. She kicks him square in the ribs when he tries to crawl away and spits on him.

"What a fuckin' piece'a shit, Garrus."

The turian put his hand back on her shoulder, and she lets him. She just stares at the captive human as he recites numbers over and over in an endless loop.

She wails, long and low and broken, full of pain and grief.

Grunt understands about brothers now.

**********

He cannot sleep.

Well, that is not entirely true.

He sleeps, in fits and starts, but he thinks his mind might be breaking while he does it. Shadowy things far too old to have names, they laugh as they hunt, but not prey.

They hunt him.

He is tethered with wires and numbers, and when he pulls and thrashes, they cut into his hide. There is no Shepard, no turian, and he is alone with the laughter and shadows.

Grunt has destroyed monsters on the battlefield, tearing them apart with both his shotgun and his bare hands, but now he is weaponless and they are formless, and if the thief has taught him anything, it is that you cannot kill what you cannot see. But monsters in his mind, it is something he cannot understand, and it terrifies him.

He fights to wake and when he finally does, he finds he has torn up the blankets and popped the fluffy pillows until their stuffing floats on the air like ash.

Grunt does not know what to do. So he does what he always does when he needs answers.

He finds Shepard.

Grunt has come to firmly believe that Shepard knows everything. Perhaps the other crew knows things that she does not, but she knows everything worth knowing.

The light on the cabin door is green. It is always green. She says an open door is important, but she also says he should knock first. So he raps his knuckles against the doorframe and she answers almost immediately. Grunt wonders if she ever sleeps. He thinks not.

“What's a matter, darlin?” she asks softly, and her voice says she really wants to know. Her eyes are red and she looks tired. The turian is either still here, or has just left - Grunt can smell his dry grass-leather scent. Grunt hopes he is still here. The turian, while quieter, seems to know almost as much as Shepard.

“I don’t… I...the sleeping. It’s hard.”

She smiles, and it is soft. “I see.”

She sticks her bare feet into furry blue shoes, and Grunt can only stare at them. What seems like a hundred toes, those Grunt has seen before when she spars barefoot with the turian in the shuttlebay. The blue paw-shoes, not so much.

“You like? G got them for me.” She wiggles her feet and Grunt sees they have plastic claws on the toes and as she walks through the door, they click on the decking. Grunt follows her, and the ship is asleep, except ‘G’, the turian. He is sitting in the mess, drinking something in a blue-dextro mug, and he wordlessly hands a red-levo one to Shepard. She takes it and gives the turian a look and a strange nod of her head, one of those silent signals that has no meaning to anyone except the two of them, and he shrugs and follows, tucking pots and mugs under his arms.

Shepard laughs at the state of Grunt’s room, and says something about pillow fights. The turian starts cleaning up and tells Grunt to help. As they sweep up the wreckage, Shepard reappears with a bundle of bed-things so tall she cannot see over it. Setting them down, she fluffs and punches and rearranges until the turian laughs and tells her to stop.

“Well, try it out!” she demands, so Grunt does. It is just as soft as the last one, and still smells like her. It is perfect, but he shakes his head. Sleep would not come if he ‘paid it to’.

Shepard plops down beside him, back against the wall while the turian sighs and does the same, handing Grunt a red mug of human tea. Like all human inventions, it is ridiculously small, but hot in his hand and the steam that curls up smells of spice and misty, quiet places.

“So, you were dreaming?” she asks, sipping on her tea and grimacing when it is too hot.

“What?”

“You know, dreaming. Like a vid playing while you sleep.”

Grunt nods, but then shakes his head. “Not a vid. Real...things. Hunting. In the dark.”

“Nightmare,” she says sagely. “Scary dream.”

“I was not scared,” Grunt scoffs.

“Of course not, darlin’,” Shepard says, but when she looks at him, he knows she knows. “Now drink your tea and I'll tell you a story my dad used to tell me when I was little.”

The turian goes stock still, listening so hard Grunt thinks he can hear the gears of his cybernetic ear-hole working. That is not anything new, though. When Shepard tells a story, everyone listens. Her voice gets low and quiet, not like others who get louder just to be heard. The quieter her voice gets, the more you can hear in it.

And then she tells stories of a great one-eyed god-warrior of her father’s people, who rode a beast with eight legs across the sky. His woman co-ruler was just as fierce, she and her women carrying away deserving dead warriors to fight again in the afterlife. There are wars and magic and weapons, and some words are not Shepard's normal long, slow ones. These words are round stones with sharp edges for teeth.

_Jöttar._

_Valkyrie._

_Einherjar._

_Vaettir._

_Valhalla._

Then Grunt remembers how ridiculous humans are and that they have more than one language. Soon, she slips into full sentences of those strange words, and his translator has no idea what to make of it, and finally goes silent. Grunt thinks the turian has simply turned his off.

They both listen, and she keeps speaking words of wind and snow, of fog and fire - words with no meaning to him, but he finds they do not need any. They have a cadence like music and Grunt decides Shepard must be a descendant of some immortal creature from the stories, wild and unknowable.

She had even died once.

People say she was just hiding for those two years, but Grunt knows different. Grunt knows no one else who has died and still lived. Maybe she is a goddess like in the stories. A valkryrie, the fiercest of females, ones that only take the worthiest warriors to the Void.

The turian looks like he thinks so too. He stares at her face, as if he has never seen her before.

Before Grunt slips under the waves of foreign words and back into sleep and dreams of one-eyed kings and eight-legged horses and glorious battles of thunder-hammers and witch-smoke, he decides he will follow his Battlemaster to the ends of the universe.

**********

Shepard groans from the heap she has melted to on the ground. She is covered in vomit and more than a little blood where she hit the back of her head. Grunt is not surprised she is alive. Yes, she was poisoned, but a little poison would not kill Shepard.

She is too strong for that.

She groans again and blinks against the bright Omega lights. “Get up, Shepard. You’re not dead.” She sighs, thick and raspy, but moves to stand. Grunt gently grabs her hand and pulls her to her feet. She sways and her eyeballs jerk and roll in their sockets, but she stays upright.

“Yesh. No. Not dead. Not yet. Maybe laters. Head hurts so bad.”

Grunt rolls his eyes (he picked that up from the painted female) and carefully lifts her up and settles her gently over his shoulder. He heads for the Normandy where he knows Dr. Chakwas will be waiting.

“Yer so nice. So big. Big big big. Big big darlin’ krogan baby.”

She mumbles and shouts nonsense the whole way and Grunt just grins.

“Krooogan baby! Big big big, as big as the moon! I love you like a great big loon!”

**********

Many things have happened.

The Collectors have been destroyed. Shepard, Grunt, and the turian blew up the human reaper in a display of spectacular firepower that made his blood sing just to think of it. Every one of his krantt fought bravely, even the glass-bone pilot, and like true krogan, they all survived. But Shepard is gone. They locked her up because she blew up a relay and killed a bunch of batarians. A colony being destroyed versus a whole galaxy? In his opinion, it was obviously a small price to pay and definitely the right decision. He remembers they day they took her away.

It is one of the worst days he has ever had.

**********

Stupid, cowardly humans! Did they not know his Battlemaster at all? How could they not recognize her strength, her greatness? She did not destroy a whole colony for giggles, she did it because it was the only choice. His Battlemaster always made the right call. He is furious. He growls at the humans leading her away. He will kill them all and take Shepard and her turian back to the Normandy so they could fight more enemies. She only gives him a quelling look and a smile.

Then Grunt understands his Battlemaster's true worth. She has bravery and integrity 'in spades.' She will not run away. She will face the consequences of her actions with honor and the strength of her convictions.

**********

He has learned much from Shepard and her krantt.

The drell taught him the value of silence. The asari taught him a little self control. The thief taught him to be cunning. The salarian taught him that intelligence is power. The geth taught him that curiosity is the only way to learn. The quarian taught him the meaning of bravery.

The old man and painted female taught him to swear better.

**********

He has gone back to Tuchanka. He fights and scraps and has fantastically violent brawls, but he remembers what Shepard said, about his people becoming more. So he does what he can. He learns about his homeland and commits it all to memory.

Wrex appoints him head of Aralakh Company. It is a great honor, to lead the company named after the wastes where the first warrior died a glorious death in battle. It is an honor that Wrex assures him is merited.

He does not want a new krantt. He wants his Battlemaster and her turian. He knows that is not possible, so he will carry on like true krogan. He cannot call his team krantt, only Shepard and her turian can ever be that. His team is loud and brash and impatient, like most young krogan. When they find that his Battlemaster is a human, a female human, they laugh. He just smiles, knocks their heads together, and tells them all about her.

**********

"I miss her," Grunt says, and he is not ashamed to say so.

"I know," Naxa says simply, and she tries her best to make him forget.

***********

Then one day, she is back.

She finds him on Utukku. His team has been investigating a possible rachni invasion, and just thinking of fighting his people’s oldest enemies sets fire to his blood. He picks her up and hugs her hard. His team scoffs, but when they see her, they are in awe of this human. Her smile for him, while happy and genuine, is fleeting. She looks so angry, and her turian does too.

She tells how she fought the Reapers on Earth, land of the dinosaurs. He growls because he was not there, and he imagines how she kicked and clawed and scratched and bit.

It certainly shows.

She used to try to solve problems by talking, and when that failed, she employed her fists, but now she just shoots first. She even smells different; the lemon part of her scent has faded. Now she smells of gunmetal, ozone, and rage. She is thinner than he remembers, limbs of whipcord with knobs of bone jutting out, sharp and angular.

They fight the rachni, and even Grunt can tell something is wrong with them. The Tank whispers how they should be, but they look wrong, they smell wrong, like rotten flesh and sparking electronics. They want killing. So he and his team do. Shepard, her turian, and the blue eyeball, who has gained a sleek, new, deadly body, kill them too. They are separated, but he can hear their victories over the comm.

Near the end of the tunnels, Shepard decides to save the queen.

Grunt does not understand. She is his Battlemaster, the one who has no match, the one he would die for. Why would she sentence his team to death for an insect?

Then he hears her in his head, the rachni queen. She speaks, and it is beautiful. She says her children are foul and cannot be saved; that death for them would be a kindness. She could be mighty, with her brood, like the old times before the Reapers. He hears the desolation and desperation in her musical voice, even though she uses dying creatures to speak, to be heard. Even as she is lost and hopeless, the last of a dying race, still she fights.

She reminds him of krogan.

He understands now why Shepard does what she does. He hears it in her voice, the impotent rage that she cannot save everyone, and he says "Goddamnit, Shepard," but he understands.

This is why she is so thin and hard and angry.

**********

He tells her he will cover their escape.

She looks at him, and for the first time since he has known her, she actually looks lost. She weaves from one foot to the other, as if the decision she has to make is tearing her apart. He growls at her to go. She does, but not until she grabs both his shoulders hard and looks him in the eye. There is pain and anger and something else Grunt does not recognize written on her face. That ridiculous moisture is leaking out of her eyes again, and this time, Grunt knows what it is. He had to search the extranet for it, but they are tears. According to her expression, these are tears of sadness, and he knows they are for him. She hugs him hard, tiny arms having no hope of even being nearly long enough to encircle his hump but trying their damnedest, and she whispers, "good luck." He shakes his head and grins. He doesn't need luck, he has ammo, and he tells her so.

She laughs and smiles for him through her tears, and he feels about ten feet tall.

**********

He plows his way through the rachni, their foul green blood slicking his boots and armor.

He has a wet chunk of insect carapace stuck between his shoulder plate and its stink irritates his nose. One by one, his men fall, but they sell their lives for a dear price. Grunt knows it is inevitable, that they will all die, but he does not mind. This is what warriors are made for; their entire purpose is to fight and die and take as many enemies with them to the Void as possible. He bellows and crushes bug after bug under his feet, smashing his fists in what he can only assume are their faces. His Claymore blats until it goes hot in his hand and dry fires. He uses it as a club for one hand while he beats a rachni with its own leg with the other. He makes headway to a cliff face, but they are too many. They pile on and he is covered in them. He roars in laughter that they have to 'dog pile' to take him down. He had never understood that saying of Shepard's, but then again, that happened with most of the strange things she said.

He has a few fleeting thoughts as the rachni try to tear his armor off and put acid in the joints.

He is glad he has the lone surviving T-Rex toy stuffed in his armor pocket. Its arms remind him of Shepard's short stubby ones. He told her that and she had laughed until she held her ribs and started to wheeze.

Naxa is going to gut him, and she would be right.

He wishes he could die in the sunlight, instead of the dark.

Time slows, and he thinks of his krantt.

'The outcome of this action has a high probability of rendering an organic platform non-operational,' says the geth.

'Goddamn it,' says the old man.

'Keelah se'lai' says the quarian.

'Serenity in death is the pinnacle of achievement,' says the asari.

'What the shit,' says the glass-bone pilot.

'Well, isn't that just the turd in the punchbowl,' says Shepard, and the turian nods his head in agreement.

The thief laughs, the salarian smiles, and drell just sighs.

'Fuck it,' says the painted female.

Grunt agrees with her assessment. He grabs as many foul creatures as he can as they screech in what he can only imagine is fear as flings himself off the cliff.

When he dies, he will make sure it is glorious.

**********

There are broken ribs, of course, of that he is sure. They have probably punctured a lung, maybe a heart. He feels them grind like glass as he breathes, but he is only slightly concerned. The Tank says he has others, but right now, it is screaming at him to get up, to fight. He does, but grudgingly. It would be nice to just lay here for a while.

He stumbles out into the light, covered in green gore. He sees her outline and she is running to him, her red armor blurry. How he ever imagined she would leave him does not bear thinking about. He is utterly ridiculous for even allowing the thought to cross his mind. He makes it to her with the last bits of strength he has left and he falls, but she catches him, stronger than she looks. The turian is on his other side, mandibles fluttering like they are trying to fly off his face. Shepard has those silly tears again, but not sad this time.

No, her pale, dirty face is glowing and her eyes are bright as she tries to show him each of her tiny white teeth all at once.

He is suddenly hungrier than he has been in a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> I just love Grunt. He's such a great character. In my head, he listens to AC/DC. I don't know why; he just does.
> 
> Also, this was proving a long read, so I split it up into chapters to make it easier to get through.


End file.
